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Ecommerce Metrics: The Top 13 KPIs To Track

Tracking important ecommerce metrics is necessary to evaluate how effective your marketing strategies are and whether your business is growing.

These top ecommerce metrics can help make the difference in total sales, repeat purchases, and customer experience.

There are several ecommerce metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that marketers can analyze.

To help you achieve results faster, we’ve highlighted the top ecommerce metrics and KPIs you should measure and how they benefit your online store.

Top 13 Ecommerce Metrics and KPIs To Track

  1. 1. Average order value (AOV)
  2. 2. Shopping cart abandonment rate (CAR)
  3. 3. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
  4. 4. Return on investment (ROI)
  5. 5. Add-to-cart rate
  6. 6. Website traffic
  7. 7. Average session on website
  8. 8. Bounce rate
  9. 9. Pay-per-click (PPC)
  10. 10. Email conversion rate
  11. 11. Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
  12. 12. Customer lifetime value (CLV)
  13. 13. Customer retention rate

These 13 important metrics fall under three major categories: sales, marketing, and customer service.

Let’s go over each category to see what these metrics are and how they help your ecommerce store.

Category #1: Sales

Keeping an eye on the top ecommerce metrics and KPIs for measuring sales is paramount. After all, they help you decide many aspects surrounding your business.

What Are the KPIs of Ecommerce Sales?

  • Average Order Value (AOV)

  • Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate (CAR)

  • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

  • Return on Investment (ROI)

  • Add-to-cart rate

Average Order Value (AOV)

AOV is the average dollar amount a customer spends when they place an order on your website.

Tracking your AOV gives you an insight into shoppers’ behavior and helps you create better pricing and content marketing strategies.

Here’s a simple formula to calculate your AOV:

AOV = Total revenue / Number of orders

Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate (CAR)

This ecommerce metric shows you the percentage number of visitors that added products to carts but didn’t complete their purchase.

The KPI is vital since a high shopping cart abandonment rate could mean your ecommerce site has a complex checkout process or poor user experience.

Ensure that you keep the shopping cart abandonment rate low to increase the sales conversion rate.

Here’s how you calculate it:

CAR = (Total number of completed transactions / Total number of existing shopping carts) x (100 / 1)

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost is a top ecommerce metric.

This top ecommerce metric tells you the total amount of money you spent in getting one customer to purchase your products or services.

You can determine the customer acquisition cost with the following formula:

CAC = Marketing costs spent to acquire customers / Number of customers acquired at this time

Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI is another top ecommerce metric that will show you how well your investment — ad budget, online store tool, or subscription — performs.

This KPI shows you whether you’re making profits or not. Here’s how you calculate it:

ROI = Net Income / Investment Cost

Add-to-Cart Rate

The add-to-cart rate is the percentage that reflects the number of visitors who add at least a single item to their cart during a session.

It’s essential to measure this top ecommerce metric to know how effective your product description, website usage, and advertising efforts are.

Here’s how you determine your add-to-cart rate.

Add-to-cart rate = Total number of sessions where web visitors add an item to their cart / Total number of sessions

Category #2: Marketing

Here are the top ecommerce metrics for analyzing your marketing performance:

Website Traffic

This ecommerce performance metric refers to the volume of web users who visit your online store.

You can use Google Analytics, Website Checker Tool, and Similar Web to measure your website traffic.

Average Session on Website

Average session on website is another vital ecommerce metric to watch out for. It is the average time a visitor spends on your online store in a single visit.

A high average web session could mean you have great content or that your website usability is excellent.

Here’s how you calculate it:

Av. web session = Total session duration / Total number of the sessions

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is an ecommerce metric closely related to the average time people spend on your website. After all, the more time people spend on your website, the lower the bounce rate.

Knowing your bounce rate helps you determine the number of visitors that leave your ecommerce website after looking at specific pages.

Here’s how you calculate it:

Bounce Rate = Total number of one-page visits / Total number of entries to a website

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Retailer measuring PPC, a top ecommerce metric.

PPC lets you see the amount of money you spend every time someone clicks your ads. You can use it for your social media campaigns and search engine marketing (SEM).

Here’s how you can determine if your PPC campaign is working:

PPC = Total advertising cost / Total number of ads clicked

Email List Conversion Rate

Email marketing is an effective way to improve your brand growth.

Ensure that you provide email opt-in to convert first-time website guests into subscribers. Then, send valuable and personalized email campaigns to build trust.

Here’s how to determine it:

Email List Conversion Rate = (Total number of new subscribers - number of unsubscribes) / (Total number of subscribers x 100)

Category #3: Customer Service

Here are the top ecommerce metrics and KPIs to track the quality of your customer service.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score

This ecommerce metric tells you the number of customers who were satisfied with your products or services — according to their responses in your surveys.

Here’s how to calculate your total score:

CSAT = The addition of all the scores / Total number of respondents

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV represents the total sum of money a customer spends as an existing customer of your business. Here’s how you calculate it:

CLV = Total average order x Average number of purchases per year x Average retention time in years

Customer Retention Rate

Customer retention rate measures the percentage of customers your business retains over a specific period.

It gives insights into ways to improve your customer service. Here’s how you calculate it:

Customer Retention Rate = (Total number of customers - Number of new customers) / Number of customers before acquisition

Final Thoughts: Ecommerce Metrics: The Top 13 KPIs To Track

Knowing the top ecommerce metrics and KPIs empowers you to perform effective conversion rate optimization and create a better user experience for existing and potential customers.

The bottom line is to start tracking your ecommerce metrics to know what areas to improve on.

Whether it’s the marketing channels to focus on or the product pages to simplify, follow our guide to find out the top ecommerce metrics to track for maximum success.

Create an intuitive website that supports analysis of the top ecommerce metrics and KPIs with Hostdedi StoreBuilder.

Don’t forget you can also avail of our WooCommerce hosting solutions to ensure your online store offers a top-notch customer experience and enhances customer loyalty.

Get started today with a free two-week trial of fully managed WooCommerce hosting.

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How To Start a Subscription Business in 6 Simple Steps

Should I buy the shoes I have always bought, or should I check out those new shoes?

Will it be worth it?

Shall I buy that top-reviewed software? Will it pay off?

There are tons of similar questions that customers ask themselves on a daily basis. In the end, most of them end up purchasing nothing.

You can bypass that by providing a stress-free and personalized customer experience.

How?

By starting a subscription business.

You can learn how to start a subscription-based business model and access a larger customer base.

You get your customers as subscribers, which lessens customer acquisition costs, increases customer lifetime value, and provides predictable revenue on a regular basis.

UnivDatos Market Insights forecasts that the global subscription ecommerce market will reach $478.2 billion by 2025. Starting from mere magazines and newspapers, it has expanded to bloggers, entertainment platforms, startups, and websites like Netflix and Amazon.

Read on to learn how to start a subscription-based business.

Subscription Business 101

In a subscription business model, customers receive a product on a regular basis through subscriptions, which get renewed — manually or automatically — at the start of every billing cycle.

Customers looking to cancel their subscription can do so after an agreed period with or without cancellation fees.

By learning how to start a subscription business, you can satisfy the varying and specific needs of a wide range of customers.

Benefits of Subscription Businesses

Starting a subscription business provides several benefits to small business owners.

Three major benefits that should get you to start a subscription business are:

Predictable Revenue

Small and new business owners have a hard time managing their expenses. They never know what they will make in the current month before its end, let alone the revenue for the next month.

Subscription-based business models change that and help in predicting cash flow. Knowing the subscribers you have, you can quickly estimate your revenue.

Lower Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the cost of getting a new customer to buy your product or service. If you spend $300 on ads and win 10 buyers, your CAC will be $30.

Starting a subscription business to reduce CAC.

Starting a subscription business will lower your CAC by getting you a higher profit from a single acquisition, as retaining an existing customer generates recurring profits.

Higher Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

By nature, a subscription-based business sells products to its customers for a long time due to convenience and seemingly low costs.

As a result, starting a subscription business not only lowers your CAC but also increases your CLV.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the total amount of money a buyer spends on your products or services throughout their time as your customer.

Types of Subscription-Based Businesses

There are four common types of subscription-based businesses.

If you’re looking to start a subscription business, you can choose one depending on your industry and your business goals:

Boxes

Many ecommerce businesses have opted for the subscription box business model, in which they deliver a monthly subscription box containing their products to their subscribers.

It is a popular business model among companies selling makeup, food, pet care, and clothing.

Ecommerce

In addition to subscription boxes, some ecommerce businesses offer an open subscription. Customers can specify the products they want and the frequency with which they require it.

Software

Software-as-a-subscription (SaaS) is a popular business model for software companies.

Starting a subscription business as a SaaS involves:

Accessibility

Accessibility is a subscription model that is a blend of software and ecommerce subscriptions.

Entertainment services like Netflix and Amazon Prime use this subscription model to provide access to movies and TV shows and extra shipping benefits, respectively.

Steps in Starting a Subscription Business

Here are the major steps to start a subscription-based business.

1. Develop Your Business Idea

Every great business starts off as an idea.

Person thinking about how to start a subscription business.

For subscription-style businesses, start by:

  • Selecting a niche — Choose a target audience and the product you want to sell to that audience.

  • Market research — Research your customers and competitors.

  • Product sourcing — Decide how you will get the product.

  • Subscription type — Select the type of subscription.

  • Marketing strategy — Develop a marketing strategy that fits your needs.

2. Adopt a Pricing Strategy

Based on your market research, check out the pricing strategy that fits your business.

If you are selling a one-of-a-kind product, opt for a price skimming pricing strategy. In contrast, a freemium model suits you if you are a SaaS company.

3. Build a Website

When your marketing strategies succeed and attract several potential customers, you want your website to be ready to showcase your offers. It will help you to start a subscription business effectively.

While building a functional website generally takes a while, Hostdedi’s WP QuickStart for membership sites is an efficient solution to help you create a custom subscription business website in minutes.

4. Plan Out Inventory and Logistics

If you are sending physical products or subscription boxes, you should ensure that you:

  • Source high-quality products from trusted suppliers.

  • Get branded labels to customize your boxes.

  • Streamline and track customer requests from order to fulfillment.

  • Add shipping costs that customers are willing to pay.

  • Deliver products on time and without damage.

5. Market Your Subscription

A major part of starting a subscription-based business is persistent marketing.

To get new customers for your own subscription box business, you need an effective marketing strategy to promote your offers from pre-launch to post-launch.

You can use marketing tactics like influencer marketing, social media, and content marketing to get a successful subscription box business.

6. Keep an Eye on Churn

Customer churn accounts for the customers who stop using your product or service in a specific time period.

Retaining your customers after starting a subscription business is crucial for your business growth.

Monitor subscription cancellations and unravel why customers are opting out. A high churn rate may be a result of credit card issues or economic changes.

Take steps to improve your subscription service and reduce churn.

Final Thoughts: 6 Steps to Starting a Subscription Business

With the ever-changing business landscape, starting a subscription business offers a relatively stable and predictable source of income.

Follow our six simple steps on how to start a subscription-based business and have a bite of the growing subscription-based economy.

Build a fast, functional site that supports your subscription business in minutes. Get started with WPQuickStart for membership sites.

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Performance & Page Speed Are Everything

There is a lot of discussion about the changes that Google made around ranking factors. Most experts regularly agree that you should pay attention to — and also ignore — Google when it comes to search engine results.

What they mean is that you should understand the changes to the algorithms so that your pages continue to rank. But you should also try to not pay attention too much because you shouldn’t focus on Google. You should focus on writing for humans, as that’s what Google is trying to do as well.

Page Load Time is a Ranking Factor

In the midst of the changes to their core algorithm, Google’s new Core Web Vitals focus on Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift.

Before you focus completely on those three factors, it’s important to understand that Google pays attention to tons of ranking factors.

One factor that has always been important is page load time. You won’t see it in the pie chart from the FirstPageSage article, unless you know what you’re looking for. And what you should be looking for is user engagement.

When a page takes too long to load, user engagement drops off. And user engagement is 5% of the algorithm — making it the 6th most important factor.

The Web Almanac tracks internet stats and produces a yearly report. In the 2020 report, looking at page weight, it stated,

“…we are closing in on 7 MB of page weight on mobile and 7.5 MB on desktop at the 90th percentile. The data is following an age old trend: growth in page weight is on the upward trajectory yet again…”

Load times get slower and slower as web pages get larger and larger. And the two factors driving page weight are images and JavaScript.

Page Weight Matters

Why should we worry about page weight and load times? Is it only because Google cares? Absolutely not. In an article from Semrush on speed, performance and SEO, they report:

In other words, they’re telling us what we already know: people will spend less time on our site when the site doesn’t respond fast enough.

The same article gives us a rubric for how fast our pages need to be:

  • If your site loads in 5 seconds, it is faster than 25% of the web.

  • If your site loads in 2.9 seconds, it is faster than 50% of the web.

  • If your site loads in 1.7 seconds, it is faster than 75% of the web.

  • If your site loads in 0.8 seconds, it is faster than 94% of the web.

So what is behind the slowing performance of the web at large and our sites more specifically?

File Sizes, Request Counts, & JavaScript

The answer is both simple and frustrating.

Our website pages are getting larger because the internet is getting faster (in most places). And because the internet is getting faster, most people (developers included) are worried less about the optimization of a few bytes here and there.

There’s no single culprit. But collectively, the plugins we’re installing and the themes we’re using are getting bigger than they ever were before.

But it’s not just themes and plugins. In fact, one of the largest sources of JavaScript on web pages is third party scripts. In other words, the scripts we add for ads, personalization, A/B testing, and more all bring more external requests for JavaScript files.

More requests per page, pulling down more and larger files, will result in only one thing — heavier pages that load more slowly.

The worst part about it is that Google is now paying attention to how we deliver pages and sites on mobile devices in their mobile first initiative. And the Web Almanac report mentioned previously highlights a troubling dynamic when it comes to JavaScript and mobile devices.

“37% is the percent of the median mobile page’s JavaScript bytes that are unused.”

In other words, we’re building pages that are getting pulled down to mobile devices, which are calling out to download JavaScript, which then isn’t being used at all.

We should be troubled by this. But the owners of websites and even some of the freelancers building websites don’t always know the nuances of what’s going on within the plugins or themes that they’re installing.

The Impact of Adding New Plugins

Until recently, when a website owner or site builder installed a new plugin, there was very little they could do to evaluate its performance. They could rely on comments or ratings on marketplaces or the plugin repository, but other than that, there wasn’t an easy way to know if a plugin would slow a site down.

The reason for this is as complicated as figuring out a plugin’s performance. Performance could be a result of great or poor hosting. There could be subtle conflicts between plugins that might cause errors on a page that could go unnoticed.

Testing the performance of a plugin would mean creating an environment (that matches the production environment) with a complete copy of everything on the production site, and then running tests against it.

But even then, you’d need to be able to isolate what was slow. Was it large files within the plugin? Or was it the number of outbound calls to poorly performing sites? Or was it a conflict with another plugin?

And that kind of monitoring is normally outside the skills and resources available to a site owner or builder.

As a result, most owners and builders simply install plugins and hope they won’t slow things down. And later, often much later, when a site feels slow, they hire someone else to come figure it out.

In other words, the cause and effect feedback loop for a new plugin and the site performance has been non-existent.

Plugin & Theme Updates

It’s not just new plugins that cause this challenge. Plugin and theme updates aren’t regulated in any manner. In other words, there is nothing that stops a plugin developer from radically re-writing their plugin and pushing it out as an update.

This has, in the past, created challenges when plugins are bought and then changed by the new owners.

But there’s another dynamic to consider when it comes to performance and PageSpeed scores.

When a plugin author decides to change their architecture, or add a new feature, they’re adding new code to their plugin. And that little update can take a high-performing plugin and turn it into a site performance nightmare — without anyone knowing.

The Plugin Performance Monitor

There isn’t a single site owner or site builder that enjoys the state of the world we’re in. Every one of them knows that performance and PageSpeed scores are everything. But knowing and being able to do anything about it are two different things.

We set out to solve this problem at Hostdedi for all our WordPress and WooCommerce customers. We wanted to create a feedback loop that would show them how the actions they were taking were impacting their site’s performance scores.

To do that we needed to start by collecting those PageSpeed scores nightly. But it wasn’t just about the scores. We needed to decipher all the feedback Google provides, and determine what was causing any changes in performance.

We’d then have to match the performance degradation or improvement to the changes being made on the site — from a user uploading large photos, to a site owner adding a new plugin or changing a theme.

Lastly, we’d have to make all of that simple so that anyone could look, at any time, and see how the changes that were being made — via user interaction or plugin updating — were impacting performance scores.

The best part of this is that you can adjust which pages you want the Plugin Performance Monitor to watch. So for WooCommerce stores, you can ask it to pay attention to pages like your cart, your my-account, and your checkout pages.

This provides excellent feedback when you’re installing plugins that are supposed to help speed up your store and you find out they’re not working as advertised.

Only Available with Hostdedi Hosting Plans

The good news is that new customers are already seeing the Plugin Performance Monitor deployed on their sites. Existing customers will see it roll out on all their sites in the next few days.

Every WordPress and WooCommerce hosting customer will now have a direct and immediate way to know how their site is performing, and where they may want to make changes (or reverse previous changes) on their site.

At Hostdedi, we understand that performance is everything. We brought image compression to Managed WordPress hosting before anyone else did. We brought performance changes to WooCommerce order data and WooCommerce reviews before anyone else did.

And now we’re bringing you the best performance monitoring before anyone else has — because we know that you know that performance is synonymous with user engagement, and it’s what matters most.

Try It Yourself

With Hostdedi, better is built in.

See for yourself with a two-week free trial of fully managed WordPress or WooCommerce hosting.

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How To Increase Ecommerce Sales on Your Online Store

It’s heartbreaking when you put up attractive offers your audience should rush at, but no one buys anything.

While money makes the world go round, sales keep a business running.

How to get those sales? How to increase ecommerce sales?

The answers lie with the website. A website can be an ecommerce sales machine or yet another ecommerce website.

Read on to learn how to increase ecommerce sales on your website.

How to Boost Ecommerce Sales

  1. 1. Have a simple checkout process.
  2. 2. Include multiple payment options.
  3. 3. Feature social proof on your website.
  4. 4. Create an easy search function.
  5. 5. Optimize your website for mobile.
  6. 6. Guide your customers.
  7. 7. Use SEO and content marketing.
  8. 8. Start upselling and cross-selling.
  9. 9. Nurture with email.
  10. 10. Use a reliable web hosting service.

1. Have a Simple Checkout Process

With so many complicated ecommerce websites on the web, you can stand out by providing a streamlined user experience on your website to increase your ecommerce sales.

Ecommerce’s shopping cart abandonment rate has always stayed high, with nine out of every ten orders never making it to the payment. As an online business owner interested in more online sales, avoid a complicated checkout system.

You can simplify your checkout process by:

  • Removing unnecessary fields.

  • Skipping irrelevant pages and pop-ups.

  • Merging the product descriptions and pricing into a single page.

In addition, you can add money-back guarantees and security logos on your checkout page as trust signals.

2. Include Multiple Payment Options

By sticking to a single method of payment, you leave money on the table.

Offer multiple secure payment options to facilitate your customers and increase your ecommerce sales. In general, accept:

  • Credit card payments.

  • Google Wallet.

  • Apple Pay.

  • Stripe.

  • WePay.

  • PayPal.

You can also accept crypto payments to attract the tech-savvy audience — usually early adopters — and increase ecommerce sales.

3. Feature Social Proof on Your Website

Social proof to increase ecommerce sales.

Social proof is vital to increase ecommerce sales on your website. It proves your credibility and serves as word-of-mouth marketing to increase the conversion rate as 87% of consumers read reviews before making a purchase.

You can include social proof to product pages in the form of:

  • Customer ratings and online reviews from third-party websites.

  • Client testimonials.

  • Social proof plugins like TrustPilot.

  • Press coverage.

  • Bestseller or trending collections.

4. Create an Easy Search Function

Most ecommerce customers lack the time to search through tons of products for a specific product. Instead, they prefer searching for the product through the search bar and judge the website based on the results.

That’s why creating an easy search function is crucial to increase ecommerce sales.

You should ensure that the search bar is in a clear, accessible spot, preferably at the top of your page. And it should be fast — customers don’t like slow ecommerce search.

For your ecommerce store, your search bar should have:

5. Optimize Your Website for Mobile

The world has gone mobile. Everything is available on our smartphones, including shopping.

Mobile ecommerce spending reached $47.8 billion in the second quarter of 2020 in the United States, making it a perfect opportunity for marketers.

Optimize your online store for mobile devices to target these spenders and increase ecommerce sales.

To do so, consider the different browsing interfaces like desktop, tablet, and mobile while developing your website.

6. Guide Your Customers

Whenever new customers land on your website, you should guide them in their buying journey by answering their questions and providing in-depth guides.

To increase your ecommerce sales, you should help your customers decide the products by themselves in an informed fashion.

You can offer guidance on your online store in the form of:

  • Live chat software.

  • Ebooks.

  • Calls-to-action (CTAs).

  • Demo.

  • Product recommendations.

Still, the bottom line is to direct your customers towards buying products from you. You can do so by:

  • Helping website visitors locate products they’re searching for.

  • Pointing customers to your top products.

  • Teaching your customers how to use a specific product.

  • Recommending relevant products based on a customer’s previous or current purchase.

By guiding your customers and helping them decide on great products for them, you build customer trust, leading to an increase in ecommerce sales on your website.

7. Use SEO and Content Marketing

Person using SEO to increase ecommerce sales.

If you are looking to increase your website’s visibility and increase your ecommerce sales, SEO (search engine optimization) and an ecommerce marketing strategy go a long way.

SEO helps you attract your customers through search engines. It drives huge website traffic to your online store. The better your ecommerce site’s SEO, the higher your ranking on the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Content marketing refers to sharing and promoting your content. It could be a difference-maker to get your sales up.

You can use content marketing strategy tactics such as:

  • PPC advertising (pay-per-click advertising).

  • Social media engagement.

  • Third-party review sites.

  • Social curation platforms and community forums.

  • Guest blogging and sponsored content.

Related reading: How To Create an Ecommerce Content Strategy >>

8. Start Upselling and Cross-Selling

Upselling is persuading someone to buy a high-quality product similar to the one they’re willing to purchase. For example, you can upsell a customer looking for simple shoes to buy waterproof shoes.

Cross-selling means promoting complementary products to a buyer. You can recommend a tripod stand to someone who purchased a camera a week ago.

These two practices are common on well-known ecommerce websites like Amazon and Shopify. Apply them to increase ecommerce sales on your online store.

9. Nurture With Email

Email marketing helps you establish a solid relationship with your customers and increase ecommerce sales on your website.

With email nurturing, you can guide potential customers with links to product tutorials, share limited-time offers, and offer personalized recommendations to your customers.

Nurturing your email list helps you build a loyal customer base that generates consistent sales.

10. Use a Reliable Web Hosting Service

Avoid mediocre website hosts that can make you lose customers due to website crashes or slow ecommerce website loading.

Use a reliable web hosting service with capable servers to increase ecommerce sales on your website.

Final Thoughts: How To Increase Ecommerce Sales on Your Online Store

Increasing ecommerce sales doesn’t have to be nerve-racking. Adopt our 10 best solutions for ecommerce businesses to increase sales quickly.

Are you looking to build a fully functional ecommerce store? Try fully managed WooCommerce by Hostdedi for free today.

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Hostdedi Introduces Sales Performance Monitor

Hostdedi is the First Managed WooCommerce Host to Deliver Sales Performance Insights with WooCommerce Hosting Plans 

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. August 11, 2021 — Hostdedi, the fully managed, high-performance digital commerce cloud platform built to optimize WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento sites and stores, today announced the release of Sales Performance Monitor as a feature on all WooCommerce plans. 

“We wanted our WooCommerce store owners to have critical insights into the health of their online store revenue,” said Chris Lema, WooCommerce Authority and VP of Products and Innovation. “Merchants are often unaware when their online store is experiencing degraded services. Most monitoring systems will alert a merchant when their entire site is down but not capture issues with payment processors or site slowness. With Hostdedi Sales Performance Monitor, our intelligence engine will send merchants alerts on sales trends, giving them much needed visibility and allowing them to get back on track if store sales are slowing down.”

Included in the cost of the Managed WooCommerce Hosting plans, the added feature means that store owners can take immediate action to understand revenue trends, should shifts occur. The Hostdedi Sales Performance Monitor will monitor a store’s sales and measure them against a predicted model based on daily/weekly historical performance. When the store’s sales are slowing down or disappearing in a way that is “abnormal” to the specific store’s trends, the monitor will alert the owner.

“At Hostdedi, our focus is in the SMB space and the freelancers and agencies that serve them. That focus has meant doing the heavy lifting to create an elastic and dynamic platform for online stores. More than simply installing WooCommerce as a plugin (which many other hosts do), our Managed WooCommerce Hosting product is a total solution — bringing custom code, a container-based dynamic platform, partners for analytics, search and abandoned cart technology, and now monitoring for Sales Performance,” said Lema.  

WooCommerce is a pre-eminent ecommerce platform for online store builders and store owners today. It sits on top of WordPress which is well known and free. People choose WooCommerce because it’s an easy-to-use platform with flexibility that provides less limits.

“We’re combining the power of WooCommerce with the industry-leading digital commerce expertise of Hostdedi, and powering the online potential of our store owners with the expectation that they have a provider who is an expert in digital commerce hosting and a partner in their success. We’re excited to be leading the way through open-source innovation that provides tremendous value to the industry,” said Lema.

Hostdedi is at the forefront of continuous innovation for WooCommerce and the store owners and agencies who use the platform. For more information about Managed WooCommerce from Hostdedi, visit https://www.nexcess.net/woocommerce/.

About Hostdedi

Hostdedi has been serving SMBs and the designers, developers, and agencies who create for them for more than 20 years by providing a fully managed, high-performance cloud solution built to optimize WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento sites and stores. As a company within The Liquid Web Family of Brands, we own and manage 10 global data centers, and collectively serve over 45,000 customers spanning 150 countries and provide unparalleled service from a dedicated group of experts 24/7/365. As an industry leader in customer service, the rapidly expanding brand family has been recognized among INC. Magazine’s 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies for twelve years.  

Learn more about the Liquid Web Family of Brands and StellarWP.

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How to Export WooCommerce Products with WP All Export

WP All Export is a powerful tool that allows you to export WordPress data to a custom CSV or XML. You can edit WooCommerce products in Excel and reimport them, migrate them to a new site, or upload them to Google Merchant Center.

Keep reading for an in-depth guide to exporting WooCommerce products, including price, stock, categories, and product image galleries. Follow along by going here to WP All Import and selecting “WooCommerce Store.”

How to Export WooCommerce Products

At a high level, here’s how to export your WooCommerce products.

  1. Go to All Export › New Export and select “WooCommerce Products” to create a new WooCommerce product export. 
  2. Decide if you’d like to export to CSV, XML, or Google Merchant Center.
  3. Drag and drop to customize your export file.
  4. Run the export to generate your WooCommerce product export. 

Below we will go into more detail for each step.

9 Steps to Export WooCommerce Products

1. Create a New WooCommerce Product Export

To create a new WooCommerce product export, go to All Export › New Export and select “WooCommerce Products” from the drop-down. Create filters to set which products are included in your export, and decide if you’d like to customize the export or automatically generate your CSV/XML for easy migration to another site.

2. Set the WooCommerce Product Export Filters

Export filters allow you to decide which products to include in your export. You can build any combination of filter rules to build the exact file that you need. To create a filtering rule, select the element you want to filter by, the rule for the filter, and then the value to filter by. Add multiple rules with “AND” or ‘“OR” conditionals.

As an example, the below set of filters will only export products that are in stock in the category “Heart Shaped” and were created before November 5 2020.

For now, let’s remove them so that all of our products are included in this export.

3. Customize Your Woocommerce Product Export File

Click “Customize Export File” to continue to the edit export page.

WP All Export automatically adds some relevant fields to the export template to get you started. Drag them around to re-arrange them, drag them out of the template to remove them, and click them to edit their names and adjust other settings.

All of the WooCommerce product data is included in the Available Data section on the right. 

The “Product Data” section contains the most commonly used fields, like SKU, price, stock, and product attributes like size and color. Product variations are automatically detected.

The “Media” section contains all of the export fields needed to export WooCommerce product galleries and attached files. The URL, filename, and all image SEO data are all available for export.

The “Taxonomies” section is automatically populated with all of the categories and tags applied to the WooCommerce products in your export. 

4. WooCommerce Product Export File Types

Click “Export Type” to decide which type of export file to generate. You can choose from the following options: 

  • CSV File
  • Excel File (XLS or XLSX)
  • XML (Simple or Custom)
  • Google Merchant Center

CSV and Excel are the best to bulk edit your WooCommerce Products, or process them in Excel or Google Sheets. They also work well for migrating WooCommerce products to another WordPress install.

Other services and systems will sometimes require an XML feed, prepared with a specific schema or format. If you’re lucky, you will be able to use the ‘Simple XML’ option. This creates a simple, single-level XML feed of your product data that will work for the majority of uses.

If you need more customization options than the “Custom XML Feed,” you can fully customize the structure of the XML file (including nested elements), control the names and order of the XML elements, and easily add static data to the feed using this option.

Finally, the “Google Merchant Center Product Feed” option creates a feed tailored to easily upload WooCommerce Products to Google Merchant Center. WP All Export pulls all of the necessary information from your products in WooCommerce, with options to map categories and configure other options specific to Google.

5. Run the Export

Let’s set the export type to “CSV.” Click “Add All” to add all fields to the template and continue to the final step of the export.

The export should be complete in less than a few minutes. After the export is complete you have a variety of options on how to proceed.

6. Migrate WooCommerce Products

In the “Download” section, click “Bundle” to get a zip file containing the export file and the import template. On a different site, upload the bundle to WP All Import and your import file and all import settings will be preconfigured. 

7. Edit WooCommerce Products in Excel

Go to the “Export, Edit, Import” section to download your products. After editing them in Excel, click “Import with WP All Import” and the changes you made in Excel will be reflected in your WooCommerce products on the site. 

For example, you can export the stock and prices for your products, edit them in Excel, then bulk update them via the “Import with WP All Import” button. All of the settings are filled in for you.

8. Export WooCommerce Products on a Schedule

In the “Scheduling Options” section you can set your WooCommerce product export to run on a schedule. Run it every day, every hour, once a week, or whenever you want. WP All Export will run at the scheduled times and update your WooCommerce store with the latest version of your export file.

9. External Apps

WP All Export integrates with Zapier, which means that you can easily connect your export to hundreds of apps. You can automatically send your export file to Google Drive or Dropbox, email it to yourself, and more.

Finishing Up

As you can see, WP All Export makes it very easy to export your WooCommerce product data. Give it a try with these steps outlined above.

With Hostdedi WooCommerce Hosting, Better Is Built In

Hostdedi offers fully managed hosting for WooCommerce designed for fast, high-performing stores. Hostdedi also:

  • Offers high performance and site speed.
  • Dynamically scales and optimizes.
  • Secures your store with always-on monitoring.

Start your free two-week trial of fully managed WooCommerce from Hostdedi today.

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How to Price Your Products: 10 Retail Pricing Strategies Ecommerce Shops Can Adopt

One of the keys to a successful business is selling at the right price. If your products are inexpensive, you may rake in more sales but have a hard time turning a profit. And if your products are too pricey, consumers will turn to other retailers, and you’ll lose your market share

But if you’re a small business owner, don’t fall prey to the misconception that price alone drives sales

When it comes to a retailer’s pricing strategy, there isn’t one surefire approach that fits all. You need to perform a product pricing balancing act that considers business and production costs, consumer trends, revenue goals, competitor pricing, and even a little psychology.

In this article, you’ll learn about:

  • What retail pricing is.
  • What kinds of retailer pricing strategies you can use.
  • How to choose the right retail pricing strategy.

What Is Retail Pricing?

The retail price is the final amount consumers pay to purchase an item. 

To make a profit, the retail price you set for a product must include the cost of goods for you, plus an additional markup to make a profit. 

As an online retailer, you can take numerous approaches to pricing products or services. The right strategy for you will depend on your short and long-term business goals.

Here’s the good news.

We’re about to explore 10 approaches, so you can pick the retail pricing strategy that will work best for you. 

Pricing Strategy Examples

  1. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP)
  2. Keystone Pricing
  3. Markup Pricing
  4. Discount Pricing
  5. Bundle Pricing
  6. Penetration Pricing
  7. Psychological Pricing
  8. Premium Pricing
  9. Competitive Pricing
  10. Dynamic Pricing

1. Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP)

If you sell mass-produced items such as consumer electronics and household appliances, the Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is a good pricing strategy to adopt.

MSRP is a standard price for an item, regardless of who is selling it. It takes the guesswork out of setting prices, but it can dull your competitive edge when your product sells at the same price as other retailers.

2. Keystone Pricing

Keystone pricing is a type of markup pricing. With this strategy, you double each product’s wholesale price to create a healthy profit margin. 

With a fixed percentage, your calculations will be simple. Maybe too simple — it’s easy to end up pricing products too low and too high.

Keystone pricing isn’t a good option if you offer highly unique products or custom items that take a long time to create because you won’t make enough profit. 

It’s just as poor a pricing strategy if you sell standardized, common products. Depending on the availability and demand for an item, it might be unreasonable for a retailer to mark up items at such a high rate.

3. Markup Pricing

Markup pricing (also called cost-plus pricing) is the most common and intuitive pricing strategy for retailers. You add a percentage of the base cost of individual items to create a profit — but you apply a different markup depending on the product. 

When selling a high volume of products or seasonal and perishable items that need to be sold quickly, it’s best to set the markup below 100%.

When selling custom products or privately labeled items like cosmetics, jewelry, alcohol, or electronics, you can set the markup above 100%.

It is straightforward in theory, but markup pricing requires you to spend extra time evaluating factors such as perceived customer value and competitor pricing.

4. Discount Pricing

When retailers mark down their products’ prices to encourage sales, it’s called discount pricing.

One form of discount pricing is the high-low pricing strategy: Products are introduced at a high price point and marked down when demand decreases. 

Electronics retailers use this strategy most often. Computers, game consoles, and smartphones are the most expensive when they’re first released. But when the next model comes out, the previous versions are sold at low prices.

Discount pricing is an effective strategy if you want to clear unsold inventory and increase sales. But if you become known for discounting your products, customers may perceive them as low quality or grow accustomed to waiting for the lower price. 

5. Penetration Pricing

Penetration pricing is another form of discount pricing. A business offers its new product or service at a lower price to attract customers. The idea is to get consumers hooked with a sale price, so they are willing to pay full price after the promotional period expires.

The penetration pricing strategy works best for subscription products, especially in a competitive market.

Businesses that use this pricing model include:

Similar to penetration pricing is the loss-leader pricing strategy, in which products are sold at a loss just to get customers in the door. 

6. Bundle Pricing

Bundle pricing is another discount pricing strategy. It’s useful if you sell related items you can package together. Bundling items lets you curate the customer experience and empowers you to increase sales volumes through up-sells or cross-sells

Common examples of bundle pricing are Christmas baskets or deli bundles that include preselected wines, cheeses, and meats.

Similar to bundle pricing, multiple pricing sets products at a lower price when more than one is purchased. For example, “buy one, get one free,” or “buy two, get 20% off.”

This strategy works best when you bundle less popular items with your high-demand products. Sales are hard to resist, especially if the customer is buying something they already want. You can simultaneously attract customers and get slow-moving items out the door. 

7. Psychological Pricing

Psychological pricing is a value-based pricing strategy. Also known as charm pricing, it depends on the customer’s perceived value of the item.  

According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon, people experience pain when they spend money.  It’s up to merchants to minimize that pain.

You see psychological pricing almost every day when retailers give products a price that ends in an odd number. 

For instance, instead of charging $6, retailers price a product at $5.99. The brain sees $5 and the consumer is tricked into perceiving a lower price.

Psychological pricing is best applied to non-essentials, as it encourages customers to spend impulsively.

8. Premium Pricing

Premium pricing (also known as prestige pricing or luxury pricing) is another value-based pricing strategy. High-end retailers sell their products at an additional markup that gives their customers the sensation of status.

Premium pricing works best when your product quality and customer service can match the expensive price tag. It also depends heavily on successfully marketing your brand as high-end. 

It’s how Gucci sells their $1,200 Lady Lock bags. Other companies that use premium pricing include:

As an online retailer, it may be difficult to replicate the luxurious feeling these companies have spent decades cultivating. However, you can validate your premium pricing with a chic design aesthetic, high-quality products, and a stellar customer experience — which includes a fast-loading website.

9. Competitive Pricing

Competitive pricing entails consciously setting lower prices to gain a competitive advantage. It works best if you’re in an industry with similar products, where your competitors’ prices are the only differentiator. 

The competitive pricing strategy is most effective if you’re a larger retailer and can negotiate a lower wholesale price from suppliers so you can still earn a decent profit. However, small retailers can be driven out of business in a price war. 

10. Dynamic Pricing

Dynamic pricing is a retailers pricing strategy where you adjust your prices according to changes in supply and demand. 

Ecommerce businesses are in the best position to use dynamic pricing because it can be done in real-time. When you sell online, you can leverage technology and data to sell the same product at different prices depending on the purchaser. 

The dynamic pricing strategy requires software, data, and manpower. WooCommerce plugins can help you price products optimally on your WordPress website.

Final Thoughts: Retail Pricing Strategy for Ecommerce Stores

When deciding on a retailer’s pricing strategy, online sellers have several factors to consider, including their company’s niche, competition, market behavior, and most importantly, financial targets.

Of all the strategies we’ve shared, no single pricing tactic will be enough. Small business owners should experiment and combine tactics to develop the right pricing strategy to ensure their company’s profitability.

Get your online store up and running fast with Hostdedi’s ecommerce web hosting plans. Experience the speed and scale of fully managed hosting for yourself. Start your free two-week trial today.

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Subscription Economy 101: the Subscription Business Model

The subscription economy grew 435% in the past nine years. From streaming services to gym memberships, consumers have more subscriptions than ever before.

For bloggers and ecommerce retailers, adopting the subscription business model unlocks the potential for significant business growth.

In this post, we’ll explain the subscription economy, including:

  • How a subscription business model works.

  • The advantages of subscriptions.

  • How to set up your website to sell subscriptions.

What is the Subscription Economy?

The subscription economy refers to the growth of businesses selling subscriptions for products and services. With a subscription business model, customers automatically pay on a recurring basis. Subscriptions are essentially a contract between you and your customers. Customers agree to pay the regular fee in exchange for you delivering a product or service on repeat.

Examples of subscription businesses include:

  • Streaming Services. These include TV or movie providers and audio services like Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, and Spotify, for example.

  • Software as a Service. SaaS subscriptions include any software you pay for, like Adobe and Microsoft 365.

  • News and Information. This area consists of content like magazines and newspapers or information like LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator.

  • Food and Consumer Goods. A relatively new area of subscription services, these include items like HelloFresh, Barkbox, or anything with repeat delivery.

  • Memberships. Perhaps the oldest form of subscription services, these include things like gyms, theme parks, and golf clubs.

Advantages of a Subscription Business Model

The subscription economy continues to grow as more businesses realize the benefits of subscriptions for their bottom line. Therefore, subscriptions are a smart and profitable business strategy.

Benefits of the subscription business model include:

Recurring Revenue

Why do businesses love subscriptions? The answer is simple: recurring revenue. Without a subscription model, a company starts each month with no revenue. But, when you offer subscriptions, you’ll know the minimum number of sales you’ll make each month. You can count on subscription renewals each month and begin to have a more predictable revenue stream.

Yes, you probably won’t be able to count on 100% renewals. Subscription businesses experience some natural attrition. But, not as much as you’d expect. Think of the subscriptions you’re paying for personally. Most consumers have at least half a dozen subscription charges hitting their accounts each month. If you offer a solid product and customer service, cancelations likely won’t be an issue.

Recurring subscription revenue is particularly beneficial for bloggers. In our post on how to monetize a blog, we addressed how creating a members-only area is a great way to add a revenue stream to your blog. Affiliate marketing and display advertising have low click-through rates, requiring bloggers to generate thousands of page views to receive decent payouts. A subscription membership area offers bloggers the security of recurring revenue while they work to build up traffic and advertising revenue.

Decreased Customer Acquisition Costs

Subscriptions are a powerful tool because it’s easier and cheaper to keep current customers than acquire new ones. Attracting new customers costs six to seven times more than retaining existing customers.

Subscribers offer several advantages to a business. Existing customers are the ones most likely to buy from you again by either trying new products and services or upgrading their accounts. For example, if you’re a blogger with a members’ area and want to launch an online course, your subscribers are the perfect target audience.

Better Content and Customer Insights

Subscribers provide excellent intel on your content and customer service strategies. You know more about subscribers than you do an anonymous visitor to your website. You can track the reading and purchase habits of your subscribers. You can also ask for basic demographic information as a part of your sign-up process.

All of this data can help you build an ideal customer profile. Use what you learn to create targeted marketing campaigns and to tailor your paid content to their preferences.

Adding Subscriptions to a Website

Adding subscriptions to a website is simple, especially if you’re running your website on WordPress. And, since it’s the most popular content management system in the world, odds are your site is running on WordPress.

Adding Subscriptions to a Blog

If you’re a blogger who wants to adopt the subscription business model, we recommend building your membership site with WPQuickStart by Hostdedi. WPQuickStart helps you build a membership site in less time with an intuitive set-up wizard.

Each WPQuickStart plan includes:

  • Fully-managed WordPress hosting by Hostdedi.

  • Perfect plugins and themes including Restrict Content Pro, a $349 value.

  • Built-in payment integrations with Stripe, Braintree, 2Checkout, Authorize.net, and PayPal.

  • Multi-level subscription packages.

  • Automated emails to communicate and connect with your subscribers.

  • Detailed reporting.

Adding Subscriptions to a Store

If you’re trying to add subscriptions for products instead of content, you’ll want to consider adding a subscription functionality to WooCommerce. Look for a WooCommerce plugin with automatic and manual renewals and the billing frequency to match your subscription business model.

For a step-by-step guide and examples, check out our post on how to start a WooCommerce subscription box service.

Embracing the Subscription Economy

The subscription economy will continue to grow. People are dropping cable TV subscriptions and replacing them with multiple streaming subscriptions. You can get anything shipped to your house on repeat, from laundry detergent to dog food.

Consumers love the convenience of subscriptions and are more willing to pay for them as the subscription business model becomes more commonplace.

Adding subscriptions to your blog or ecommerce store is a great way to grow your business.

Hostdedi can help you embrace the subscription economy. Get started with a WPQuickStart Membership Site today, or check out our WooCommerce resources for setting up subscriptions in your store.

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How To Open an Ecommerce Store in 11 Steps

Do you think that online stores are only about showcasing your products to customers?

That’s not all.

A fully functional WooCommerce store handles nearly every process involved in transacting with a customer. It handles payments, facilitates checkout, and updates orders.

Whether you’re looking to move your brick-and-mortar store or start a new business, an online store will help scale your business and grow revenue.

Even if you have closed your physical store due to the pandemic, you can still serve your customers with their shopping needs.

If you are having a hard time understanding how to open an ecommerce store or feel that it’s too much to handle, we have got you covered.

Read on to learn how to start an online store for your business.

Ecommerce Store 101

Opening an ecommerce store

An ecommerce store is an online business platform to sell products and services over the internet.

It enables customers to purchase products and services without leaving homes or offices.

You can sell anything you want — from physical goods like shoes and jewelry to digital products like ebooks and music. Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and AliExpress are some prominent examples.

Start an Online Store

  1. 1. Understand Your Niche
  2. 2. Determine Your Product
  3. 3. Determine Your Source for Products
  4. 4. Think About Your Budget
  5. 5. Name Your Business
  6. 6. Register Your Business
  7. 7. Apply for Permits and Licenses
  8. 8. Define Your Brand Identity
  9. 9. Choose an Ecommerce Platform
  10. 10. Choose a Website Host
  11. 11. Showcase Your Products

1. Understand Your Niche.

A niche is your intended market audience. It includes the people you would sell your products to — your prospective customers.

To convert these potential customers into your clients, you need to:

  • Recognize your customers’ needs.

  • Find out the target audience’s desires.

  • Understand your audience’s values.

An easy way to do this is to identify your competitors and check on what they’re up to. Analyze their strategies and understand their whats, whys, and hows to develop your business plan and marketing strategy.

When deciding your niche, avoid overcrowded and brand-dominated niches. While competition lets you know that there is an existing market for your product, a crowded market does you no good.

2. Decide Your Product.

To start a successful online business, you need to decide the products you want to sell.

You can sell:

  • Physical products

  • Services

  • Digital products — software, ebooks, apps

  • Courses and subscriptions

You can perform further research on your competitors to decide the range of products you can sell.

Research their business models and their trending products. Find out what you can emulate and pick actionable ideas.

Also, look for social proof for your business ideas. Go to popular online stores and see which items sell better in your niche.

How to open an ecommerce store  —  searching for product ideas on eBay

You can also try Google trends for brainstorming product ideas.

Nonetheless, pick a product you’re interested in and are familiar with. It will make it easier for you, as a business owner, to relate to your customers and deliver the best products.

3. Ascertain Your Product Source

Depending on what you’re selling, you need to decide your sourcing for your products. You can opt for:

  • Buying in wholesale — and operating as an online retailer.

  • Partnering with a manufacturer.

  • In-house manufacturing — for new products.

  • Dropshipping the product.

4. Set a Budget

Before you create your online store, you need to plan your finances upfront.

Depending upon the niche and the nature of the business, it can cost you between $100 to $100,000 to set up your online store.

Plan your budget for:

5. Name Your Business

Your business name should fit your business. Either go for a unique name that stands out in public or a relevant name that describes your business.

For example, business names like Target and Yahoo stand out. In contrast, names like Diehard Batteries and MyFitnessPal let the customers know what they are about.

You can also try a business name generator to brainstorm names for your business.

Once you have selected a business name, get a domain name — the permanent online address to your ecommerce site. It allows customers to find you on the web.

6. Register Your Business

While it depends on local rules and regulations, it is usually better to register your online business.

It helps you with credit card processing and product sourcing. Also, it lets the buyers know that your startup is operating legally.

7. Apply for Permits and Licenses

Depending upon your location, you may require business permits or licenses to operate your online business.

The exact permit depends upon the ecommerce business and the business regulations in your state and country. It is better to get legal consultation.

8. Define Your Brand Identity

Everything from your business name to your web page design should be consistent with your brand.

For that, pay close attention to:

  • Page layout

  • Color scheme

  • Typography

  • Business logo

  • Photos

9. Select an Ecommerce Platform

It’s time to choose an ecommerce platform and create your online storefront.

While there is a wide range of ecommerce platforms to choose from, you need to consider the budget, ease of use, and features — like templates, tutorials, and support for SEO and social media — to decide the one that is best for you.

As a feature-rich ecommerce platform with low costs, Hostdedi’s StoreBuilder with WordPress is a great choice to create and manage your store.

10. Choose a Website Host

In your quest of how to open an ecommerce store, a good website host is vital.

While the domain name points to your shop, the strength of that shop — how many visitors it can support, how secure it is, and how fast it is — depends upon the website host.

If you are working toward a secure, fast, and high-performing WooCommerce store, check out Hostdedi managed WooCommerce for free.

11. Showcase Your Products

You have reached the final step of our guide to how to open an ecommerce store and have built your online shop.

It’s time to configure your product pages:

If you chose Hostdedi to create your WooCommerce store, you can create your product pages and publish your store easily without doing things from scratch.

Final Thoughts: How To Open an Ecommerce Store in 11 Steps

You know how to open an ecommerce store for your business. Don’t postpone this opportunity and take a step to launch your ecommerce website now.

All you need is to determine the right product for the right market. After that, you can develop your online store without coding.

Ready to open an online store for your small business?

Start your journey today with StoreBuilder — a powerful website builder.

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How To Get Organic Traffic to Your Website in 2021

Building organic traffic is easy peasy, right?

Wrong.

Going organic is not for you if you’re looking for a quick fix for driving traffic to your website. It’s hard work and requires patience to see results.

Having said that, choosing organic traffic boosting strategies might be the greatest investment you can make for your ecommerce business.

Ideally, you can drive traffic to your website either through the search engine results pages (SERPS) using search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) ads that are placed before organic results (such as Google Ads).

In paid advertising, the results are almost immediate but you must pay every time a user clicks on your ads. This is a shortcut to your goals and might only give you temporary customers and a high bounce rate.

Building organic website traffic is free but requires long-term effort.

If you want to know exactly how to get organic traffic to your website, keep reading.

Organic Traffic: Why It Matters for Your Business

Organic traffic refers to visitors that come to your website after performing a search on a website like Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

Organic traffic takes time for SEO to generate results, but it’s the most superior form of traffic for your website.

Here’s why.

Organic traffic is targeted — meaning the users who click through to your website have a specific intent and have a higher conversion rate than a random visitor from a paid search.

Organic traffic can also increase your credibility since users are more likely to trust websites that rank organically.

How To Increase Organic Traffic to Website

  1. Use long-tail keywords.

  2. Consider influencer marketing.

  3. Leverage on-page SEO.

  4. Find and remove non-performing content.

  5. Become a guest blogger.

  6. Create video content on YouTube.

  7. Promote your content on social media.

  8. Answer questions on Google’s People Also Ask.

Ranking high on search results is a dream for any website owner or marketer. If you rank on the first page, you’re sure to generate plenty of organic traffic. Fail to rank on the first page, and your dream remains just that — a dream.

Here are eight practical tips on how to get organic traffic to your website:

1. Use Long-Tail Keywords

How to drive traffic to your website: Generate long-tail keywords.

Writing high-quality content is only half the battle if you want to learn how to drive traffic to your website. You can increase organic traffic to a large extent if you focus on long-tail keywords in your keyword research.

Long-tail keywords are a combination of three or four words, such as “best WordPress security plugins” or “restaurants in Lagos.”

You can create compelling titles for your blog posts by using long-tail keywords. Consider using tools like Ahrefs’ free keyword generator] when you search for keyword ideas.

2. Consider Influencer Marketing

Influencers tend to have lots of followers who regularly engage with them. Having them mention and recommend your brand can be a total game-changer and drive massive organic traffic to your website. They can also create original, new content for your brand.

You can get new potential customers using an influencer as your brand ambassador, especially if you run a small business.

3. Leverage On-Page SEO

Besides creating and publishing great content, you need to optimize your webpages for search engines when learning how to drive traffic to your website.

On-page SEO includes optimizing your images, HTML tags, and headlines. Ensure your images support your content, and optimize your meta description and title tags. Your header tags make your posts easier and more enjoyable to read, which can also impact your rankings.

Overall, your on-page SEO will increase website traffic and boost your website’s visibility in the SERPs.

4. Find and Remove Non-Performing Content

Non-performing content is content on a website that doesn’t fulfill its original purpose. This can cause major bottlenecks and compromise your chances of ranking in the SERPs.

That is because search engines experience a snag in the crawling process and leave your website before getting to important pages.

Removing non-performing pages enables important content to rank higher in results pages and will help you earn more organic traffic.

5. Become a Guest Blogger

Guest blogging is a two-way street. You can become a guest blogger for other websites, or you can invite people in your niche to blog on your website.

Your guest post on a high-authority website can significantly increase traffic to your website and help boost brand recognition. Usually, the website’s business owner will encourage you to share the link on your own website. This can give you referral traffic, and you’ll earn backlinks on your website.

6. Create Video Content on YouTube

How to drive traffic to your website: Create content on YouTube.

Your content strategy shouldn’t stop at crafting excellent material for your website — you can turn it into different formats, including audio or video.

For instance, YouTube videos can help attract and engage new subscribers. Uploading videos is an online marketing strategy that allows your customers to see a demonstration of your product or service. It also helps answer questions about your brand.

This can greatly increase purchases and drive organic search traffic to your website.

7. Promote Your Content on Social Media

While sharing content on social media platforms is an excellent content marketing method, you have to be assertive.

Participate in discussions with relevant hashtags on Twitter. To engage with visitors, answer questions on your Facebook page and respond to comments.

You can also post your content on relevant, high-traffic communities, including Reddit, Slack, LinkedIn, Quora, and Facebook groups. Build trust and cultivate a relationship with the community before you promote your content (and make sure the group allows it). Anything other than that could look spammy.

Ensure you interact with your followers on various social networks so you can build a rapport with them and establish long-term trust. That way, they’re more likely to share your content with their contacts, promoting traffic and brand awareness.

8. Answer Questions on Google’s People Also Ask

How to get organic traffic to your website: Answer questions on Google’s People Also Ask

Instead of creating generic content about a topic, dig deeper and search for questions people are asking on Google Search. A vast majority of those who ask these questions are entrepreneurs looking for specific solutions.

You can create content with a target audience that will earn organic traffic. So, if you’re a blogger, use Google’s People Also Ask to find questions to answer and generate blog posts.

If you create content around actual questions that users have asked, you are sure to drive organic site traffic.

Final Thoughts: How to Get Organic Traffic to Your Website in 2021

This guide doesn’t exhaust every method on how to get organic traffic to your website, but the tips we discussed will help you build a successful organic traffic strategy.

From guest posting to creating videos to social media marketing, you might spend a lot of time until you see results. For new website owners, it won’t happen as quickly as you might want, but consistency and quality will generate organic traffic in time.

Choosing a reliable web host is a crucial step towards driving traffic to your website. With Hostdedi’ Fully Managed WooCommerce and Fully Managed WordPress hosting, we take care of what matters most to your online business. Get started on your path to success with our hosting solutions today.

Start your free two-week trial of fully managed WooCommerce or WordPress hosting today.

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